How to Create an Educational Mobile App

How to Create an Educational Mobile App

Screen sizes the world over are shrinking, with people preferring to consume content on the move; in bed, in the train or on the treadmill. Laptops and larger screens are increasingly being reserved for more relaxed, long-drawn consumption. The consumption shift is evident just as well in education. With new-age learners choosing to hone their skills in every sphere, mobile screens are proving to be winners all around.

If you plan on launching an e-learning marketplace or even wondering how to create an online course, make sure you frame your idea within the four walls of a mobile screen. Launching a mobile version of your website is essential in penetrating the right audience.

What Is an Educational Mobile App?

An educational app is a software or combination of technologies that enables virtual teaching and self-learning. While e-learning has been a buzzword for the last decade, m-learning, or mobile learning, is gaining momentum in the mobile age. Most education technology companies choose to create a mobile version of their desktop offering to promote usage across devices. By offering customers the option to access courseware across devices, you can envelope them in an immersive experience and lengthen their learning curve. The need for video in educational mobile apps is vast and creating a video bank may be something you should consider. If you do plan to add video to your platform, think of Pinlearn to do it for you because it will help you when considering how to create an online course.

What Are the Benefits of Educational Mobile Apps?

There are several merits that educational apps bring to the fore. Here are some of them.

User-Friendly Navigation

Designed well, a mobile app can serve as an effective meeting point for you and your students. An app replete with user-friendly content can provide easy navigation for all stakeholders. However, the app needs to be tailored for users, both in its aesthetic appeal as well as in its functionality. Craft an intuitive interface that allows users to find tools and controls easily. When you create online school, make content discovery an easy, enjoyable process, even for the technologically challenged. Your users should channel their energy into absorbing content, not on decoding your app. That said, your app needs to be equally accessible by you, saving you time and energy in uploading content. If you seek Pinlearn to integrate a video platform onto your site, the navigation tools pertaining to the video portion of your interface will be taken care of.

Interesting Content

Digital teaching techniques are a far cry from conventional textbook learning. Educational apps are interactive, interesting and instinctual, feeding off users’ commands. Use a combination of learning formats to create engaging content. Throw videos, graphs, infographics, images and gamified tools into the mix.

On-The-Go Learning

As a digital educator, you aren’t competing with physical institutions. Schools and colleges with campuses rely on physical attendance. Unlike e-learning, mobile learning allows students to learn remotely, at anytime. All they need is a smartphone; so think on how to create an online course. That means you’ve created a whole new market for yourself, composed of homemakers, office-goers, students and even business travellers.

What Are the Steps to Create an Educational Mobile App?

Here are our two cents on how you can create a phenomenal educational mobile app:

Step 1. Create Your Technology Base

Developing an excellent technology base for your platform is crucial, because user experience rests on the robustness of your technology stack. Engage a developer to do this for you. However, keep in mind that the elements housed in your application may need to be tweaked as your business evolves. Create elements that are versatile and which can be reused for later versions of your app. This includes code, sounds and artwork. Once you’ve built your base, acquire a video streaming framework to allow teachers to upload video courses. Pinlearn, with its remarkable interface and handy control panel, is a great option for this. Along with impressive features, it also offers its own monetisation options.

Step 2. Start With One Mobile Operating System

The tricky thing with mobile apps is that you have to create parallel versions of the same app to suit various interfaces. iOS, Android and Windows, for instance, each require a different source code. Start off with one operating system and launch a pilot with a limited set of users. This will help you weed out any bugs and also help you refine the code for other operating systems.

Step 3. Craft Your Monetisation Strategy

You could monetise your brand in several ways when you give a careful thought on how to create an online course. Course-wise pricing has traditionally proven popular in education, with many brands choosing to charge customers per course. Alternatively, you could also go the subscription route, opening all your courses to subscribers for a fixed monthly fee. A third line of revenue you could think of pursuing is sponsorships. By stitching brands into your courses, you could garner significant interest from sponsors. This, however, rests on the premise that you build a sizeable user base first. The same holds true for banner advertisements.

Step 4. Refine Your Marketing Strategy

If you plan to offer mainly vocational courses for professionals, consider partnering with corporate organisations to allow their employees to access your courses. Offer a discount to these companies in return. However, if your captive market is younger, say college students, leveraging social media is a good idea. Post on relevant university groups, create a page and collaborate with influencers. Better still, if your app is aimed at little children, your target should be to capture the attention of parents. For this, you could resort to posting discount codes on parenting groups on Facebook and even talk to schools about introducing your content in their curriculums. Offer the desktop version of your application to schools, while providing the mobile version to the parents of its students. Lay importance on seamless education when you think to create online school.

Step 5. Test Your Audience

This is essential. Don’t go all out until you’ve tested the waters with a focus group of learners. Seek out a circle of students from various backgrounds for this activity. Work on the feedback before you execute a hard launch.

Step 6. Save Time on Redevelopment

For this, let’s rewind a little. Before setting out on this project, make sure that you draft a prototype of your screen flow. Also, complete your UX testing process beforehand and invest time in application development. By doing so, you can save time during redevelopment.

Step 7. Customise Your App to Your Audience

If your students are children, the way that you present your app should be vastly different than if it were for adults. For children, bright graphics, pleasing sounds and a simple workflow should be complemented by a breezy navigation interface. Trim the plugins, controls, social media links, banners and promotions when your audience is younger, because children are tactile and it’s likely that they will click unwanted controls as they progress through the module. Consider adding a child lock to your app for a select set of features when you create online school. Open these only to parents through a unique passcode.

Step 8. Launch Your App

Once you’re done with the groundwork and market research, go ahead and launch your app. Monitor your market for a response even as you do so. Even the smallest negative feedback can tarnish your brand.

It’s well known that smartphones and smart apps make smart learners. By being part of the smart education revolution, you can make a difference. There’s more opportunity than you know.